The first tranche of ratings involved 28 cryptocurrencies, with Beijing’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology looking to expand the series to include public blockchain projects and more crypto assets.

The scheme only came to light earlier this month when the Ministry announced it at a Beijing conference.

“First-rate domestic experts and scholars” contributed to the ratings, which they calculated on the basis of three indexes: “technology,” “application” and “innovation.”

Ethereum scored highly across all three, giving it a lead rating which echoes its first place in Weiss’ cryptocurrency ratings from January this year.

Conversely, Bitcoin appeared lacking in the “technology” and “application” fields, despite beating every other crypto asset in “innovation.”

“The results show that the typical representative of the second-generation blockchain technology is Ethereum's technology assessment index,” CEN wrote.

Responding on Twitter, commentators nonetheless found it difficult to understand China’s logic, the mood similar to the uproar which ensued as Weiss gave Bitcoin a ‘C+.’